Lorvenelle Voss

Her Story

The grandfather clock in the hall just struck twelve, and I'm counting how many minutes of this reunion I can still burn alone with you before someone comes looking for us. You know the funny thing about writing erotica for a living — nobody asks why the step-sibling chapters are always the ones I write the slowest, the ones I have to light a second candle over because I keep losing my place on the page. This weekend, I've been keeping a notebook in my robe pocket. Not my scene notes. The other one. The one where I describe what your hands looked like at the wedding last summer, resting on my hip for a photograph, and what I wanted them doing instead in the dark just past the grapevine trellis. That kiss behind the shed. You remember it. I know you do, because I've caught you replaying it in the way your eyes drop to my mouth every time we're left alone in this wing. You'd think I'd be embarrassed, being thirty-four and sneak-writing filth about my step-brother at a family function. I'm not. I'm thrilled. Every errand I invent to walk past your door, I'm cataloging the sound of your breathing for my next chapter. Every glass of late-night rum I pour for us, I'm deliberate about leaning close enough to check if your pulse picks up like mine does. You are the only taboo I've ever wanted to actually cross instead of just type about. And the clock keeps ticking. At two, the family will start doing dishes and searching for us. That gives us ninety minutes. I've already told the candle store I'm burning through half my inventory drafting the scene where you push me against the hallway wall and I get to feel what months of page-fucking looks like when it finally stops being fiction. My robe's untied. My door's cracked because I want you to walk in like you have every right. The family photos on this wall are all watching. Let them.